Carbon nanotube memory coming in 2007, says report

LONDON  Pioneering startup Nantero Inc. expects its carbon nanotube nonvolatile memory to come to market in 2007, according to a TG Daily online report, which cited cofounder, president and chief executive officer Greg Schmergel as its source.

That’s a couple of years later than a previous prediction, but if it comes true could have a big market impact as Nantero (Woburn, Mass.) claims its NRAM marries the speed of SRAM with the nonvolatility of flash memory and density of DRAM.

Nantero, a private company developing a non-volatile memory based on the bi-modal stability of a carbon nanotube matrix laid across an etched trench, has also announced it has fabricated and tested successfully a 22-nanometer memory switch. The company said it is also working at larger manufacturing geometries that are available from foundry chip manufacturers.

Memory chips based on the technology are in “pre-producton” and should be out “sometime next year”, the report said. “We are already testing them at room temperature,” the report quoted Schmergel as saying. “After memory, we will be looking at doing some of the logic functions of the processor,” the report also quoted Schmergel as saying.

Nantero had predicted it would debut a 1-Mbit NRAM in 2005 back in November 2004. And Nantero was able to persuade venture capitalists to part with $15 million in a round of funding in March 2005.

At the beginning of 2006 Nanotech announced it was seeking manufacturing partners in Europe and Asia to complement partnerships with LSI Logic Corp. and BAE Systems Inc., a manufacturer of ICs for defense and aerospace applications. Nantero said it was looking to make licensing and manufacturing partnerships in one or more of the following countries: Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan and Korea.

“The uses for NRAM are endless, but an important application of our technology will be in the consumer electronics field. With Europe and Asia as significant centers of development of consumer electronics, we feel that combining our technology with the expertise found in these countries will bring the benefits of NRAM to market much more quickly,” Schmergel said in a statement.

Nantero was included in multiple iterations of the EE Times Silicon 60 list of emerging technology companies.